Turkey is ready to sign FTA with Ukraine

Both countries are interested in increasing trade.

KYIV (QHA) -

The Republic of Turkey is ready to sign a standard agreement on free trade area with Ukraine as soon as possible, said Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Şimşek at the 13th Yalta European Strategy annual meeting, answering journalists' questions about the time-frame of signing the FTA between the two countries.

"We are ready to sign the standard free trade agreement," he said in Kyiv on Friday, September 16.

According to a QHA correspondent, the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister noted that the recent decision of the International Monetary Fund to allocate the next tranche to Ukraine is encouraging evidence of implementing reforms in the country.

"This shows that even in the most difficult circumstances the countries can carry out reforms, and I believe that Ukraine is implementing the reforms in the most difficult times," said Şimşek.

It was reported earlier that President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March that the two countries want to increase their trade turnover to $ 20 billion by 2020, and emphasized the need for signing the Agreement on free trade area by end of this year.

The question of forming a free trade area between Ukraine and Turkey was frozen in 2013 and returned to the agenda at the beginning of 2016, during the visit of Prime Minister of Turkey in Ukraine.